Latest / Big Talk About Small Business / Ep. 27 - Circuits Amidst Crops, The Unconventional Rise of a Tech Company

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Ep. 27 - Circuits Amidst Crops, The Unconventional Rise of a Tech Company · Big Talk About Small Business

• 0:04
  Mark Zweig: Hey everybody, we're back with another episode of Big Talk about Small Business and thankfully, my partner, eric Howardton, is back this week.
• 0:17
  Mark Zweig: Well, thanks, mark.
• 0:18
  Eric Howerton: I appreciate you busting me out about not being here last week.
• 0:20
  Eric Howerton: When I was here last week?
• 0:22
  Mark Zweig: No, you were, or was that the week before?
• 0:25
  Eric Howerton: Must have been the week before.
• 0:26
  Eric Howerton: Okay, yeah, because I was late last week.
• 0:29
  Eric Howerton: Okay, is that it?
• 0:30
  Mark Zweig: Well, anyway, yeah, I had to do one of these by myself, and it's always more entertaining with Eric here.
• 0:36
  Mark Zweig: Well, thank you.
• 0:37
  Mark Zweig: I appreciate that so and hopefully informative as well.
• 0:41
  Eric Howerton: Hopefully.
• 0:42
  Eric Howerton: So I mean, I have opinions, you do have that.
• 0:45
  Mark Zweig: Just of course, everyone has them, as they say.
• 0:48
  Mark Zweig: I won't get into what that old adage is about opinions Right, but anyway, no, they're good opinions.
• 0:56
  Mark Zweig: But we also have a guest with us today.
• 0:59
  Mark Zweig: Matt Francis, who is the founder and president of Ozark Integrated Circuits, is here with us today and I met Matt like maybe a year or two ago and I was impressed with the guy.
• 1:17
  Mark Zweig: He's very interesting guy.
• 1:18
  Mark Zweig: Congratulations, matt.
• 1:21
  Eric Howerton: You impressed, mark.
• 1:21
  Eric Howerton: Well, it was a large walk.
• 1:23
  Matt Francis: Actually, specifically Mark said at our first visit you're weird.
• 1:26
  Matt Francis: Well, I like you.
• 1:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly, we value nonconformity here in our personal and business relationships, and you certainly have done that, and your business is a very unique business that we'll get into in a little bit.
• 1:44
  Mark Zweig: But so, matt, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
• 1:48
  Mark Zweig: Where did you grow up and how did you get into what you do?
• 1:51
  Mark Zweig: Well, sure, thanks, mark.
• 1:53
  Matt Francis: Well, pleasure to be here with you.
• 1:54
  Matt Francis: Yeah, so I grew up all over.
• 1:57
  Matt Francis: I'm a child of aerospace so nice.
• 2:01
  Matt Francis: So I was born in Michigan.
• 2:02
  Matt Francis: We lived in New Jersey for several years.
• 2:05
  Matt Francis: My dad actually started installing radios down for Falcon Jet and Little Rock, so both my parents are from Arkansas.
• 2:12
  Mark Zweig: I used to actually work with them back in the round 1983 Falcon Jet from a facility standpoint and it was cool People don't realize they were French jets.
• 2:24
  Mark Zweig: They flew them over here with a pack of instrumentation that they would take out and take back over and fly another one and they still do that to this day, so yeah.
• 2:35
  Matt Francis: so my dad knocked on the door in the 70s and said there's a job for a draftsman.
• 2:40
  Matt Francis: He interviewed and they said well, you're not qualified, but you want to work on airplanes.
• 2:43
  Matt Francis: Oh, cool and so he ended up.
• 2:46
  Mark Zweig: That gives me a lot of faith in us whites.
• 2:48
  Mark Zweig: You want to work on the wings?
• 2:50
  Matt Francis: Yeah, so he ended up working his way up to being the charge of spares for North America.
• 2:58
  Matt Francis: So that's how we ended up.
• 2:58
  Matt Francis: I was born in Michigan and then we moved to New Jersey and he did that there.
• 3:04
  Matt Francis: So I spent my first six years in New Jersey, Then we moved to Texas where he was a national tech rep for them, and then we moved up to Tulsa where he I know you're on the shocking went to go work at a startup.
• 3:18
  Mark Zweig: Well, we either follow the lead of our parents or we do the exact opposite.
• 3:25
  Matt Francis: Yeah.
• 3:25
  Matt Francis: So I don't think I understood it was a startup, it was just another job it was.
• 3:29
  Matt Francis: And so I actually kind of grew up around airplanes.
• 3:32
  Matt Francis: And that was a company in Tulsa still there Bizjet that refurbishes and does maintenance on business jets.
• 3:39
  Matt Francis: So that's probably where I got the bug for what part of what Ozark does, which is aerospace, is growing up around engine shops and things like that.
• 3:48
  Matt Francis: And then when it came time to go to college, I was well, I was growing up in Oklahoma.
• 3:54
  Matt Francis: I was all set to go be a cowboy at Oklahoma State and this John White guy offered me a Chancellor's Scholarship to the U of A and so I was in a class there in the late 90s and then stuck around at the Walton Fellowship and the rest of sort of history.
• 4:13
  Mark Zweig: So now you got three degrees in total, didn't you?
• 4:16
  Mark Zweig: No, I got four degrees.
• 4:17
  Mark Zweig: Four degrees, dang Mark.
• 4:19
  Mark Zweig: Sorry about that.
• 4:20
  Mark Zweig: The thing I like about Matt is he's got all this education.
• 4:22
  Mark Zweig: He's a PhD, but he's not, like you can see, he's a very practical down there.
• 4:28
  Matt Francis: He's going to academia.
• 4:30
  Matt Francis: Yeah yeah, my Christmas vacation was going out in the shop and working on tractors.
• 4:36
  Eric Howerton: So, yeah, I got tractor too.
• 4:37
  Eric Howerton: I need your help.
• 4:39
  Mark Zweig: So now you have engine, you pursued engineering.
• 4:42
  Matt Francis: Yeah Well.
• 4:43
  Matt Francis: So yeah, I actually started as a mechanical engineer because of my love of engines and cars and things.
• 4:49
  Matt Francis: And then along the way I started realizing there's like, if you're going to work in this, the electronics are even becoming, at that time, even more important.
• 4:59
  Matt Francis: So I ended up switching over electrical engineering and then I was like, well, this is interesting, but I want to know a little more.
• 5:06
  Matt Francis: So then I doubled in physics Wow.
• 5:08
  Matt Francis: And then, once I doubled in physics, I got the quantum mechanics and I said I have learned enough, I'm good, this is as deep as I want to go.
• 5:15
  Matt Francis: So I stopped there, ended up getting a master's and a PhD in double E electrical engineering Nice.
• 5:22
  Eric Howerton: Wow, and so you did it.
• 5:24
  Eric Howerton: Congratulations.
• 5:27
  Mark Zweig: But you didn't go into academia.
• 5:28
  Mark Zweig: I mean, obviously with a PhD in electrical engineering you can have a really good job in academia.
• 5:32
  Mark Zweig: I mean people don't realize these guys start out at like 200 plus.
• 5:36
  Mark Zweig: Oh really, yeah, it's a good and it's a nice lifestyle, but you didn't opt for that.
• 5:44
  Matt Francis: I like making things.
• 5:44
  Matt Francis: That's my thing, and I think there's more opportunity to do that now in academia than there was back then, because of all the blab.
• 5:52
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and we're, and rightfully so.
• 5:55
  Mark Zweig: It's what we need to be focusing on Incubators and things that we have.
• 6:00
  Matt Francis: But no, I was like I went and worked.
• 6:01
  Matt Francis: I had unique opportunities while I was in school.
• 6:04
  Matt Francis: I went and did internships and co-ops everywhere.
• 6:07
  Matt Francis: I worked at Hewlett-Packard when they were the biggest tech company in the world, worked on some of the biggest chips in the world, got the bug for that.
• 6:14
  Matt Francis: I worked for the Air Force Research Lab up in Dayton Ohio and got to see like all of it, like that was a whole side of the federal research.
• 6:23
  Matt Francis: I had no idea what we did to enable our war fighters Did you see like any of the UFOs and stuff there?
• 6:31
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I know what you said.
• 6:32
  Matt Francis: I worked in the building that supposedly you know they moved the aliens from.
• 6:36
  Matt Francis: Osmull too.
• 6:37
  Matt Francis: And we had a tornado drill went down the basement.
• 6:40
  Matt Francis: I did not see a single alien.
• 6:42
  Matt Francis: Heck, you know I was hoping you'd do that.
• 6:43
  Eric Howerton: It's been the best podcast of all time.
• 6:45
  Eric Howerton: Thank you, it's been a huge mark.
• 6:47
  Mark Zweig: Oh man, I'm doing you buddy.
• 6:48
  Eric Howerton: If we brought out the alien truth we could have unmasked it right here Right.
• 6:55
  Mark Zweig: Un-big talk about small business, you know.
• 6:57
  Mark Zweig: Anyway, sorry, we missed it.
• 7:00
  Matt Francis: So I said, while I spent my, you know, when I had my base pass, I looked everywhere, yeah.
• 7:03
  Matt Francis: I did not find any Sure.
• 7:05
  Mark Zweig: I mean the lovelies are, though he knows it all.
• 7:08
  Mark Zweig: I don't even think the guy's got a degree.
• 7:12
  Mark Zweig: I'm not sure there's any evidence he actually worked for the government, but go on, sorry, so anyway.
• 7:20
  Matt Francis: So you know, I said when I got into graduate school that was one I wanted.
• 7:25
  Matt Francis: I've always like, said, came from a family of entrepreneurs, small business owners.
• 7:30
  Matt Francis: I said, even when my dad was working at these companies, my parents were usually running businesses on the side financial services, mortgages, whatever.
• 7:38
  Matt Francis: I was always, you know, sort of seeing my mom was a realtor.
• 7:41
  Matt Francis: When I learned to drive.
• 7:43
  Matt Francis: I learned to drive in a Lincoln Continental because it was a realtor car, right, so you know.
• 7:49
  Matt Francis: So I've always had that bug whether I had a job or not, I always kind of wanted to side gig.
• 7:53
  Matt Francis: And so when I got into graduate school, the opportunity came up to be involved in a startup and it was a kind of transferring some of the things I had worked on in graduate school and it was in modeling and simulation, so electronic circuits, so you want to make them operate, and in that case it was like in space, so there's radiation.
• 8:14
  Matt Francis: Radiation affects the circuits and so you have to design for that.
• 8:17
  Matt Francis: So I worked on some of them.
• 8:18
  Matt Francis: And temperature, extreme temperature, yeah, and that's where I started to learn about extreme temperatures.
• 8:23
  Matt Francis: And so I did that for five years, you know, and like most startups, it wasn't successful.
• 8:29
  Matt Francis: But that's what I, you know, I tell a lot of young people if they want to go, if they want to go work, they think they want to start a company.
• 8:36
  Matt Francis: I said go work for one first.
• 8:38
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, right Start up.
• 8:39
  Matt Francis: Yeah, because I learned a lot of things not to do.
• 8:41
  Matt Francis: I learned.
• 8:42
  Mark Zweig: you know, Learning what not to do is every bit as important sometimes as learning what to do.
• 8:46
  Eric Howerton: Oh, hell yeah.
• 8:47
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 8:48
  Matt Francis: Yeah, so but.
• 8:49
  Matt Francis: I know Eric.
• 8:50
  Mark Zweig: Glard everything for me.
• 8:51
  Eric Howerton: I did yeah, no, yeah, that's true.
• 8:54
  Eric Howerton: No, it is so true it is far more successful.
• 8:57
  Mark Zweig: No, no, that's not true.
• 8:58
  Matt Francis: That's true, it's absolutely true, go on so, yeah, so.
• 9:03
  Matt Francis: But you know, I learned about that application area and then what?
• 9:06
  Matt Francis: That's what led to starting Ozark and focusing on the hardware side, and I said how did you do?
• 9:13
  Matt Francis: That?
• 9:14
  Matt Francis: How did you start?
• 9:14
  Matt Francis: Well, I love software.
• 9:16
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 9:18
  Matt Francis: Like that's one of the things that is said.
• 9:19
  Matt Francis: If I could go sit down and go work on something for a day, I'd go write some software.
• 9:23
  Matt Francis: Don't get to do it a lot these days.
• 9:25
  Matt Francis: But what I figured out is I didn't like selling software.
• 9:28
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I really didn't like selling software to engineers.
• 9:31
  Matt Francis: Yeah, because they're pretty harsh critics.
• 9:34
  Matt Francis: Yeah, sure, yeah, they always wanted to do something different than what's designed for, and one of the things I learned is I think if you're definitely with technical products, it's really good to have a relationship of respect to the point that your customers think what you do is magic.
• 9:51
  Matt Francis: That's a good place to be.
• 9:53
  Mark Zweig: Well, it helps if you're an engineer or selling to engineers.
• 9:56
  Mark Zweig: There's no doubt about that, because they don't have a lot of respect for people that aren't yeah, exactly yeah, or me, or me.
• 10:01
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, you're suits.
• 10:09
  Mark Zweig: It's like we're not even suits, but they would still.
• 10:11
  Mark Zweig: I got called that before.
• 10:13
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's like, well, hey, you should go have something to eat.
• 10:15
  Eric Howerton: I mean, that's what I'm here for.
• 10:16
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:17
  Eric Howerton: She's gonna have something to eat and talk about it.
• 10:22
  Matt Francis: So you mentioned farming along the way.
• 10:24
  Matt Francis: Yeah yeah, I had grown up just around equipment engines.
• 10:32
  Matt Francis: Sure, you gotta be handy on a farm.
• 10:34
  Matt Francis: Well, I didn't grow up on a farm, but I guess I don't know.
• 10:40
  Matt Francis: We had a big garage and I became all of my friends' shop To the point I had my friends' parents would pay me to fix their cars.
• 10:48
  Matt Francis: Right to fix the kids' cars.
• 10:51
  Matt Francis: That's what I did in high school one of many things and so when I met my wife at the U of A, in marching band, and that's that I participated for five years of undergraduate you were in marching band, yeah, so yeah, I was the.
• 11:07
  Matt Francis: I ended up being the, I played drums and I was the captain of the drum line.
• 11:13
  Eric Howerton: Awesome, damn man, he's done everything.
• 11:15
  Mark Zweig: I see you, the thing is too.
• 11:16
  Mark Zweig: What he hasn't gotten into yet is he is solely responsible for making Elkins, arkansas, into a decent town.
• 11:26
  Mark Zweig: I mean, really let the fire, that's started there I have said I'm not solely responsible but Maybe you would know why he fired.
• 11:34
  Matt Francis: We'll talk about that.
• 11:35
  Matt Francis: That's where I was leading to.
• 11:37
  Matt Francis: It's a great community that we yeah, I think we.
• 11:40
  Matt Francis: It's beautiful down there We've helped people realize what a great asset it is in north of Arkansas, but no, so I met my wife in marching band and so well, what came with her were four horses, and so that's where the Dude.
• 11:58
  Mark Zweig: I've been there.
• 11:59
  Mark Zweig: My daughters are both into.
• 12:01
  Mark Zweig: My oldest has a horse farm, Yep.
• 12:04
  Matt Francis: Well, yeah, and we've sold her hay before.
• 12:07
  Mark Zweig: There you go.
• 12:08
  Mark Zweig: We're all related here.
• 12:09
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, oh, this will last.
• 12:11
  Mark Zweig: It's very incestuous.
• 12:12
  Matt Francis: Well, our markets saw that we travel and people are like I go all over the world and I'll say I'm from Arkansas and there'll be someone in the room, and we know each other and people are like are there like 12 people there?
• 12:23
  Matt Francis: No, it's more like 15.
• 12:25
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's like 15.
• 12:28
  Matt Francis: But no.
• 12:29
  Matt Francis: So I learned how to sort of along the way, how to buck bales and all that kind of stuff, and so at some point it became pretty perry if I wanted to see my wife and she wasn't going to be spending all her time commuting to go take care of her horses, right, and we were like I don't know, we're not going to be spending all of our time commuting to the farm or them.
• 12:44
  Matt Francis: So that's how we ended up in Elkins.
• 12:45
  Matt Francis: So we found kind of our dream property out there.
• 12:47
  Matt Francis: We have 10 acres right in the middle of town with a historic farmhouse that we're both in the old houses and you redid that.
• 12:57
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it took seven years to do that, god did.
• 12:59
  Eric Howerton: It Isn't that crazy, yeah, and was that just so frustrating the whole way through?
• 13:05
  Matt Francis: It was.
• 13:05
  Matt Francis: I mean, it was a labor of love.
• 13:07
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and I said I actually was my second 100 plus year old house to renovate and no, I witnessed the transformation over time.
• 13:17
  Mark Zweig: I mean you could see like, wow, somebody's really doing something with this house.
• 13:20
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you have to be meticulous with it Sure right yeah.
• 13:25
  Matt Francis: But when I bought the property I didn't really understand farming at all.
• 13:27
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and we bought 10 acres.
• 13:28
  Matt Francis: And we accidentally bought, like you know, only some of the few 10, eight flat acres in Northostar you saw, right on the White River.
• 13:34
  Matt Francis: Oh, that's great, yeah.
• 13:35
  Matt Francis: So you rode on the river yeah, we're just, I mean, real close.
• 13:38
  Matt Francis: And we looked out my back door and so, yeah, so the first summer we had it we realized this is more than four horses can keep up with.
• 13:47
  Mark Zweig: So I said you better get more horses.
• 13:50
  Matt Francis: Well and then I was like, hey, he's kind of expensive.
• 13:52
  Matt Francis: And so that's where it kind of started.
• 13:54
  Matt Francis: I got a tractor and then I went down to the local harps and there was an ad for a hay baler for sale for $400.
• 14:01
  Matt Francis: Wow, next thing I know I became a farmer and so I actually enjoyed, I said.
• 14:07
  Matt Francis: I said I love working on cars.
• 14:08
  Matt Francis: I actually ended up loving working on tractors and five equipment even more, cause you just you look at it, you can see exactly how it works.
• 14:14
  Mark Zweig: It's not really simple, isn't it?
• 14:15
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and who cares if there's scratches in?
• 14:17
  Mark Zweig: the body work or what they do.
• 14:18
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it's about making it work and so so, yeah, I really got into that over the years.
• 14:22
  Matt Francis: I've I've got like five or six tractors now, which is stupid for the 10 acres, yeah, but they go back from 1956 to early 80s.
• 14:32
  Matt Francis: Oh, that's cool, yeah, so all sorts of different kinds and stuff.
• 14:35
  Matt Francis: So, yeah, it's just that's.
• 14:37
  Matt Francis: That's definitely what become one of my my favorite hobbies and passions and it, like most of them, somehow makes money too.
• 14:43
  Mark Zweig: You know what's your use.
• 14:44
  Mark Zweig: That's the way I got to do it.
• 14:46
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's true I got.
• 14:47
  Eric Howerton: I've been getting into like moving dirt.
• 14:49
  Eric Howerton: I love like.
• 14:50
  Eric Howerton: I got some property that I just bought some equipment where I got a skid steer.
• 14:55
  Eric Howerton: Go out there and just tear some stuff up clean, clean debris.
• 14:58
  Eric Howerton: I have some property around the river so it's just nothing but a trash can of flood debris.
• 15:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, so there's always something.
• 15:05
  Mark Zweig: So that you can take that.
• 15:06
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, and you can.
• 15:08
  Matt Francis: yeah, it's so satisfying and that's a strong way to satisfy it.
• 15:10
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it's so, it's so satisfying, it's truly satisfying, yeah.
• 15:12
  Matt Francis: So the winter, yeah, and the winter I got to, I've got to work on this equipment because in the summer, that's it's all about.
• 15:16
  Matt Francis: I'm out there and that sense of satisfaction of you laid it, you know, and it's I never said that was.
• 15:22
  Matt Francis: Growing up, I never had that opportunity to have the satisfaction to say, like, look, I filled that barn with hay and it's going to feed all these animals.
• 15:29
  Matt Francis: It's awesome.
• 15:30
  Matt Francis: And these other people's animals and Mark's daughter's, yeah, yeah God, I got to sell some hay to Mark yeah, I mean it's like, I said, it's, it's, I'm not into that, yeah.
• 15:40
  Mark Zweig: So hay birders, I'll leave that to you and your wife and my daughter daughters.
• 15:45
  Matt Francis: Yeah, so, yeah, so, yeah.
• 15:47
  Matt Francis: Well, and that's how it all worked with us.
• 15:49
  Matt Francis: They have a barn in a shop.
• 15:50
  Matt Francis: They're the same size that I.
• 15:52
  Matt Francis: We go out there every weekend.
• 15:53
  Matt Francis: I work on tractors, she, she works on horses Isn't that great, I like.
• 15:57
  Matt Francis: I like things that when you get on them and you turn the key to start, yeah.
• 16:00
  Matt Francis: No kidding, you know so, and she likes, and they don't they don't.
• 16:04
  Mark Zweig: They just sit out there and colic and have all the problems?
• 16:08
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I don't know.
• 16:09
  Matt Francis: I said this.
• 16:10
  Matt Francis: I had a little international this weekend that was kind of colic it wasn't, but it was in the carburetor.
• 16:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, no, no, they don't have a will to die like horses, You're right, they just there's a pain, but anyway.
• 16:24
  Mark Zweig: So so let's go back to Ozark integrated circuits.
• 16:28
  Mark Zweig: Now, how did you get into that?
• 16:30
  Matt Francis: And and yeah.
• 16:31
  Matt Francis: So I said when.
• 16:31
  Matt Francis: So when the when the other company, you know, was clearly you know this 2008, 2009,.
• 16:37
  Matt Francis: There were some, there were some things going on the economy back then.
• 16:40
  Matt Francis: Yeah, yeah, yeah the you know it wasn't gonna, it wasn't gonna go.
• 16:44
  Matt Francis: You know, I was looking around what to do and I was like, well, I have these skills, I know integrated circuits, I know, I know simulation modeling, for I know extreme environments and what am I gonna do.
• 16:58
  Matt Francis: And so there were not a lot of job openings in those fields at the time in Northwest Arkansas you could have been a professor, though you know.
• 17:07
  Matt Francis: And I, and that was that's basically what I did, is I?
• 17:09
  Matt Francis: I was basically a postdoc, okay, so that, so that I wasn't full time, right, I could, I could concentrate on, on starting the company.
• 17:18
  Matt Francis: But but, like I said, I like making things and so when I started this company I said, well, let's try the hardware side, right, and so and it kind of works out as a as a beautiful thing for me because it I got to the first really six, seven years of the company.
• 17:32
  Matt Francis: What I did, my technical expertise, was I wrote the software for the company that made the circuits.
• 17:37
  Matt Francis: I see, okay, and that ended up being our competitive advantage starting out, because Sure, more confidence.
• 17:43
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Matt Francis: Because most people go buy it and the software to make chips starts at $100,000 a person to a million dollars plus Good.
• 17:51
  Matt Francis: Lord.
• 17:51
  Matt Francis: Well, and so that.
• 17:53
  Mark Zweig: Your software sell for that much perceived.
• 17:56
  Eric Howerton: Oh, hell, no, yeah.
• 17:58
  Eric Howerton: And the funny Different industry, yeah.
• 18:02
  Matt Francis: Different industry.
• 18:03
  Matt Francis: Yeah, this is well you know, it's the, it's the, it's the software to make chips.
• 18:07
  Matt Francis: So it's it's.
• 18:08
  Matt Francis: In the grand scheme of things, it impacts a huge industry, but it's a small volume.
• 18:11
  Matt Francis: There's not that many people in the world that actually does it?
• 18:13
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, you don't have.
• 18:14
  Eric Howerton: I mean, what?
• 18:15
  Eric Howerton: Where the hell else are you going to get the software at?
• 18:16
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, the competitive amount was probably not as great, right.
• 18:20
  Matt Francis: No.
• 18:20
  Matt Francis: So when you talk about, you talked about research and professors.
• 18:24
  Matt Francis: Well, you know, where did all the where did all of the software start for designing circuits in universities?
• 18:31
  Matt Francis: Yeah, so it all.
• 18:32
  Matt Francis: It actually some of the first open source code was for circuit simulation, really yeah, so so I had.
• 18:40
  Matt Francis: This is some of the stuff I learned at the previous company the software side, and so when I started this company, we evaluated solutions.
• 18:46
  Matt Francis: We said you know, we've got more time than money, let's invest in the software.
• 18:52
  Matt Francis: And so we did so.
• 18:54
  Matt Francis: We went and took the best in class things that were out there, built a whole tool chain, and what we learned along the way is well, we were doing it.
• 19:01
  Matt Francis: We were doing circuit design for really weird things.
• 19:03
  Matt Francis: We were doing high temperature, we were doing radiation, we were doing extreme vibration, all this kind of things that they, at the time, really no one was doing anything in.
• 19:12
  Matt Francis: Well, we didn't need the bleeding edge software.
• 19:16
  Matt Francis: We weren't making Intel processors or anything, because that's where most of the software's concentrated on, that really high performance.
• 19:22
  Matt Francis: We were not doing that, we were doing the specialty.
• 19:25
  Matt Francis: Well, by doing the software ourselves, we can customize it for what we were doing.
• 19:29
  Matt Francis: Yep, so over about, like I said, five, six, seven years, me and my partner Jim Holmes at the company.
• 19:35
  Matt Francis: We just we built chips and we built the software around building the chips.
• 19:40
  Matt Francis: And then, uh, how do you build?
• 19:42
  Mark Zweig: a chip.
• 19:45
  Eric Howerton: I mean, that's it's easy.
• 19:46
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah, I'm just kidding.
• 19:48
  Matt Francis: Well, it's a, I'm gonna take the chips, maybe.
• 19:50
  Matt Francis: But, I had an advantage.
• 19:53
  Matt Francis: I talk a lot about this, like why it's hard to explain to kids these days.
• 19:57
  Matt Francis: When I was in high school, one of the things I did was I worked in a photo lab.
• 20:01
  Matt Francis: I did.
• 20:02
  Matt Francis: That's great, it's fantastic.
• 20:04
  Matt Francis: It's something that you can't do these days.
• 20:08
  Eric Howerton: No, you can't.
• 20:09
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it was a great experience.
• 20:10
  Matt Francis: Well, make it.
• 20:11
  Matt Francis: If you understand how to photo, think of a photo lab on steroids.
• 20:16
  Matt Francis: That's how you make it, how you make integrated circuits.
• 20:19
  Eric Howerton: Okay, so how's that?
• 20:19
  Eric Howerton: What's the I mean?
• 20:21
  Eric Howerton: What do you mean by that?
• 20:22
  Matt Francis: Because you you essentially make negatives.
• 20:24
  Matt Francis: We call them masks.
• 20:26
  Eric Howerton: Got it.
• 20:27
  Matt Francis: Better chips and the different layers of the chips.
• 20:29
  Matt Francis: That's what we're designing and then you shoot those onto essentially film.
• 20:33
  Matt Francis: Really yeah.
• 20:34
  Matt Francis: Which is the, which is the silicon.
• 20:37
  Matt Francis: Okay, oh shit, so we put different, you put different photo.
• 20:40
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 20:42
  Eric Howerton: Because?
• 20:43
  Eric Howerton: Because you're just literally layering layers upon, layers upon layers, and there's the special thing that's in there.
• 20:49
  Matt Francis: I mean, it's actually along the lines of what we did you do in photo processes.
• 20:53
  Matt Francis: I mean, a lot of the things are based on silver, right?
• 20:55
  Matt Francis: Yeah Well, silver is conductive, so you could, what we, what you were doing in a photo lab, you could have made making circuits, dang it.
• 21:02
  Mark Zweig: If you'd know that I'm not gonna say that, oh well, what you know, what could you have done with your lights?
• 21:07
  Eric Howerton: So much you know we would be mad, like number one can powder, so, but yeah.
• 21:13
  Eric Howerton: It is no, that's really cool.
• 21:15
  Eric Howerton: It's really cool.
• 21:16
  Eric Howerton: You have to.
• 21:17
  Eric Howerton: I guess you had to be in the dark.
• 21:18
  Eric Howerton: You have to be in dark, yeah.
• 21:20
  Matt Francis: So we and so, to be honest, so we don't really do any of that in-house that actual part.
• 21:24
  Matt Francis: I'll talk about what we do at Ozark.
• 21:26
  Matt Francis: But that's the.
• 21:27
  Matt Francis: That's how you make the actual chips.
• 21:30
  Eric Howerton: Didn't know that.
• 21:30
  Eric Howerton: And as part of that is I mean, obviously you want to get the chip as small.
• 21:34
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yes, yes.
• 21:37
  Matt Francis: And that's where it said, yeah, and like the, we talked about this whole world of like it, of design, like before they'd made software to do it.
• 21:44
  Matt Francis: If they actually drew out the circuits and then reduce them down, mm-hmm.
• 21:49
  Eric Howerton: Just like like in the old, like printing press days yes, you'd shoot negatives, yes, of the paper, and then you'd draw out the freaking rubies to do the C and YK processing.
• 21:59
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and it was.
• 22:00
  Matt Francis: They used RubyLith in the early days.
• 22:02
  Matt Francis: Like I said, it's it's freaking awesome, and I said that and that's one of the lessons is like everything's based off something else.
• 22:07
  Mark Zweig: It is, it is.
• 22:09
  Mark Zweig: It is how some of these early experiences that you would think are unrelated to your ultimate, you know, refaction.
• 22:16
  Matt Francis: You don't.
• 22:17
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I said, that's why I tell young people.
• 22:19
  Matt Francis: I was like just don't say no to things when you're young, just go try things, and that's still so cool too, cause you'll never forget those times, spin-in times and those.
• 22:27
  Eric Howerton: You know the historical foundation, you know.
• 22:30
  Eric Howerton: I mean like in photography, real quick.
• 22:32
  Eric Howerton: You know, like the whole digital photography stuff.
• 22:34
  Eric Howerton: People start on the digital side and they never understand aperture, shutter speed, the physics of the light.
• 22:41
  Eric Howerton: They don't understand the dots per inch, you know from back in the day and how all that relates to pixels and they can't get the qualities.
• 22:47
  Eric Howerton: They don't understand all those roots but it's all based upon that stuff.
• 22:51
  Matt Francis: It's all based on it exactly, and that's why I shoot with old manual focus lenses.
• 22:56
  Matt Francis: Love it, man.
• 22:57
  Eric Howerton: Dude.
• 22:57
  Eric Howerton: Hey, yeah, love that.
• 22:58
  Eric Howerton: You know I've been wanting to get into medium format photography.
• 23:01
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, cause I mean when I was starting out that stuff, like I was running around in nature shooting pictures of waterfalls and, like you know, positive transparency slides top film.
• 23:12
  Mark Zweig: Didn't anybody ever tell you don't go chasing waterfalls.
• 23:16
  Eric Howerton: I know that's your favorite song.
• 23:17
  Eric Howerton: You broke or you brought that out in one podcast.
• 23:20
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, I do.
• 23:21
  Eric Howerton: That's his favorite Hegum song.
• 23:23
  Eric Howerton: I was like what kind of music you like?
• 23:25
  Eric Howerton: Well, I like waterfalls by TLC.
• 23:28
  Eric Howerton: Are you kidding me right now, dude?
• 23:30
  Eric Howerton: Is that seriously your music?
• 23:32
  Eric Howerton: My favorite but I was like that's the one why I ask you what kind of music you like.
• 23:37
  Eric Howerton: That's the first thing you said.
• 23:40
  Eric Howerton: They have very wide ranging tastes, but anyway, like back in, like you go out, there came equipment and you couldn't see anything and you take you a week and a half to develop the film you know, after you've been back from a trip so satisfying, oh wow I got on that and I mean, I don't know if this was your experience, but half the people that worked in photo labs back in the day were aspiring photographers Absolutely.
• 23:59
  Matt Francis: That's why they did it Absolutely.
• 24:00
  Matt Francis: So I have lifelong friends that still from over, like I should have almost 40 years ago where we met in a photo lab.
• 24:07
  Matt Francis: So that's so cool, but anyway, it's a small like says a small world.
• 24:11
  Matt Francis: It is Arkansas.
• 24:12
  Matt Francis: Well, that was Oklahoma, Two degrees of separation.
• 24:15
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, what was?
• 24:17
  Matt Francis: that two months ago Eastern.
• 24:19
  Mark Zweig: Oklahoma.
• 24:19
  Mark Zweig: So the land time for God is what I call that.
• 24:24
  Matt Francis: So 50 years behind, yeah Well hey, we won't get into that.
• 24:31
  Matt Francis: So once you have the chip, you have to put it in something, because when you talk to somebody about electronics, what they immediately think if they know anything, they think like a green circuit board.
• 24:40
  Matt Francis: That's what everybody's popularized.
• 24:42
  Matt Francis: Well, you have to take the chip and you have to put it.
• 24:44
  Matt Francis: Usually, traditionally, we put it in something called a package, and that's the little black thing that you see on the board.
• 24:49
  Matt Francis: So it might be plastic, it might be ceramic, with little leads coming out of it, and then that's soldered on a board and then they have a system.
• 24:56
  Matt Francis: And so you've got to do all those things or you have nothing useful.
• 25:00
  Matt Francis: You have to be able to connect it all together, and so when I started the company, we were concentrating on the chips, and the market we were going after were these extreme environments.
• 25:10
  Matt Francis: So we were looking at oil and gas, so like drilling underground, high temperature, stream, vibrations, things like that.
• 25:19
  Mark Zweig: Well, you need a chip for to drill, though.
• 25:21
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I'm really curious about that.
• 25:22
  Matt Francis: That's all.
• 25:23
  Matt Francis: The drills are steered.
• 25:26
  Matt Francis: I see.
• 25:27
  Eric Howerton: So you have to navigate, so you have to navigate Yep OK.
• 25:30
  Matt Francis: And then you have you log wells, you're logging pressures, you're trying to because you're flying blind.
• 25:34
  Matt Francis: You're trying to figure out what's down there.
• 25:36
  Mark Zweig: Makes sense, Makes sense.
• 25:37
  Matt Francis: So there's yeah, so that's actually.
• 25:39
  Matt Francis: And actually, if you go back to Texas Instruments, Texas Instruments first projects were to serve the oil and gas industry.
• 25:46
  Matt Francis: That's why it's in Texas.
• 25:48
  Matt Francis: So how do?
• 25:48
  Mark Zweig: you sell that.
• 25:49
  Mark Zweig: You've got this Stone calls, bro, you know.
• 25:52
  Mark Zweig: Come on, man, I mean seriously, how do you sell this?
• 25:55
  Mark Zweig: Who do you sell that to?
• 25:58
  Matt Francis: Well, so my specialty has turned out in small businesses has been basically deep tech.
• 26:02
  Matt Francis: That's what I do and, yeah, you don't go raise investment for that traditional.
• 26:07
  Matt Francis: You don't go raise a venture.
• 26:09
  Matt Francis: If you do, you'll probably run out of business really quick because these are things that could take five to 10 years to come to fruition.
• 26:16
  Mark Zweig: Well, like pharmacy drug development.
• 26:19
  Matt Francis: Exactly Well, who funds that?
• 26:21
  Mark Zweig: to start, I would guess big money, the government.
• 26:26
  Matt Francis: OK, the government it's, depending on what stats you look at.
• 26:30
  Matt Francis: The number one thing we invested in producing the US is essentially pharma and medicine.
• 26:36
  Matt Francis: As the government yeah from the government investments, but the next one would be military right.
• 26:43
  Matt Francis: Exactly, exactly.
• 26:44
  Matt Francis: So what I'm saying.
• 26:46
  Eric Howerton: Smart guy more.
• 26:47
  Eric Howerton: You see that shit man.
• 26:48
  Eric Howerton: I've always known that about you.
• 26:49
  Matt Francis: Thanks, man so we make a lot of it.
• 26:51
  Matt Francis: We said, well, we can get into this if we have time.
• 26:54
  Matt Francis: But that's really what the CHIPS Act was recognizing is that we invent the US as the engine of innovation of the world.
• 27:01
  Mark Zweig: Right, we may not make the CHIPS, but we are the technology behind the CHIPS and so like what?
• 27:08
  Matt Francis: But we sort of got into a mindset of outsourcing everything and it got Right, and that's not good.
• 27:12
  Matt Francis: It's not good.
• 27:13
  Matt Francis: And so they said what we need to get better at is the transition.
• 27:16
  Matt Francis: And I'm Mr Transition.
• 27:17
  Matt Francis: I saw something.
• 27:18
  Eric Howerton: They're funding, they help to subsidize, so like we can manufacture here as well, yes, and, yeah, that's what's going on right now with the CHIPS Act.
• 27:27
  Matt Francis: But with small business, there's a program that a lot of people don't know about if you're trying to start tech companies, which is the SBIR Small Business, innovate Research and there's a couple flavors of it, but you can get like six to one year grants for $100 to $300,000, $400,000.
• 27:47
  Matt Francis: You can get multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts through it to go solve problems that the government thinks are deep tech problems.
• 27:56
  Matt Francis: So that's what you, that's what you.
• 27:58
  Eric Howerton: That's what you?
• 27:58
  Matt Francis: Yeah, that's what you're doing and so, yeah, and so when I started the company that first year I've lost count, but I know I wrote anywhere from 20 plus proposals.
• 28:08
  Eric Howerton: That's literally what I was doing with my prototype you personally were writing grants, basically Grant proposals.
• 28:14
  Matt Francis: Yeah, grant proposals, contract proposals, and the way the program works is there's a set aside for every agency for this.
• 28:21
  Matt Francis: It's a percentage of their overall budget.
• 28:22
  Matt Francis: So everybody's got one.
• 28:24
  Matt Francis: Nasa has one, all the branches of DoD, nih, nsf, and so you can go look around those and you talk about some really cool customer discovery.
• 28:34
  Matt Francis: I really like working, for example, with the DoD, because they're basically saying we have this bizarre problem, is there somebody out there that has an interesting solution?
• 28:43
  Matt Francis: And so you start learning about these really interesting problems and so yeah.
• 28:48
  Matt Francis: So I did that for a year and I was literally just about to give up.
• 28:52
  Matt Francis: That's why I actually I joke about it to this day.
• 28:54
  Matt Francis: I got my BlackBerry.
• 28:55
  Matt Francis: I'd left a board.
• 28:57
  Mark Zweig: Dude, I gave up BlackBerry.
• 28:59
  Mark Zweig: I was like the last guy.
• 29:01
  Matt Francis: I loved my BlackBerry, the last one out the door.
• 29:03
  Matt Francis: I loved them.
• 29:03
  Matt Francis: It's still in my museum, oh yeah.
• 29:05
  Mark Zweig: I've got a bunch of them too.
• 29:06
  Mark Zweig: We've got a display case in our living room that's got some old BlackBerry stuff.
• 29:11
  Mark Zweig: I want them.
• 29:13
  Matt Francis: If you go to the Smithsonian right now they have the Natural Science Museum has a display of cell phones, how they're made and all the metic minerals and they have old cell phones.
• 29:23
  Matt Francis: It was how to blast taking my daughter through there and showing all these old cells.
• 29:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, we used to have those ones that were like in a pack.
• 29:29
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you'd be like huge.
• 29:31
  Eric Howerton: When I first met Mark for my interview, he was on that dag on BlackBerry.
• 29:36
  Eric Howerton: He's multitasking While he's talking to me right now one of his swig letters.
• 29:39
  Eric Howerton: It's probably it's not good, I wish not how many words on this wide?
• 29:44
  Eric Howerton: You do at least 2,500 words.
• 29:46
  Mark Zweig: Oh no, 500 to a thousand.
• 29:47
  Mark Zweig: But I wrote like 100 and some articles in a year.
• 29:50
  Mark Zweig: But on your Blackberry, yeah, I do it on an iPhone now, which I hate the lack of people I know the feature.
• 29:58
  Eric Howerton: Oh the ball.
• 29:59
  Matt Francis: And the ball.
• 30:00
  Matt Francis: Yeah, that was it, that was awesome.
• 30:03
  Mark Zweig: That was the best brick breaker game of all time.
• 30:04
  Eric Howerton: Exactly, I used to keep spare parts handed when they wouldn't.
• 30:08
  Eric Howerton: I'm like why can't you be more successful Blackberry, Because you're going to lose.
• 30:13
  Mark Zweig: I can play that ball before I changed mine too.
• 30:16
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah, you could wear it out.
• 30:17
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, I would wear it out, but then they wear out, yeah, but anyway.
• 30:21
  Mark Zweig: Anyway.
• 30:23
  Mark Zweig: So I was literally I have.
• 30:24
  Matt Francis: well, no, I had a board meeting after a year of doing this and we said, yeah, I don't know if this is going to go.
• 30:30
  Matt Francis: So, like, I've written 30 of these things and you haven't had anything back.
• 30:34
  Matt Francis: You know we'd done some consulting things or whatever, but it wasn't turning anything.
• 30:37
  Matt Francis: And literally I got in the parking lot and I checked my Blackberry.
• 30:42
  Matt Francis: It says you know, award notice.
• 30:43
  Matt Francis: Oh great.
• 30:44
  Matt Francis: So like, okay, let's give this a go.
• 30:46
  Matt Francis: So that was just about the time my daughter arrived.
• 30:50
  Matt Francis: So I'm literally we're going to the hospital, so how?
• 30:52
  Matt Francis: long ago was this, so this was 2012.
• 30:56
  Matt Francis: Okay, wow, yeah, so, yeah.
• 30:59
  Matt Francis: So we started the company and I said a year later, I finally, so we finally hit it.
• 31:05
  Matt Francis: And so then, basically, we started from almost almost nothing and basically designed our first chip in six months so when you were, applying for those grants and stuff and you said you went to your board that day.
• 31:20
  Eric Howerton: I mean, how were you?
• 31:21
  Eric Howerton: Were you self-funded?
• 31:22
  Eric Howerton: I mean, when you took that board.
• 31:23
  Matt Francis: It was just basically all.
• 31:25
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, just like an advisory, and okay, so people just got in and they're going to help this way.
• 31:30
  Eric Howerton: That was sweat equity, sweat equity basically.
• 31:32
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, okay, love it.
• 31:33
  Mark Zweig: So that's a smart move, I think, a lot of people don't do that.
• 31:38
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and I said and there's things, there's things I would do differently about it, about defining the sweat.
• 31:43
  Eric Howerton: That's such a big deal.
• 31:44
  Eric Howerton: I love that point because I love sweat equity.
• 31:47
  Eric Howerton: I love it.
• 31:48
  Eric Howerton: I love it because I mean I'm a contributor, like if I say I'm going to do something you know, and I will contribute above and beyond what I said.
• 31:55
  Eric Howerton: I will, except unless it's Mark.
• 31:57
  Eric Howerton: He contributes more than I do on this podcast.
• 31:59
  Eric Howerton: But anyway that don't want to bust out a live board meeting right now, but I mean, but defining that sweat equity like that to me is kind of this magical thing that.
• 32:11
  Matt Francis: And it's never perfect, but I think that's one I'm with you.
• 32:14
  Matt Francis: It's like one of the number one things when I advise somebody is like what, let's figure out a structure that's probably going to work for you and going to grow into, because you don't want to get into sore feelings and stuff because of how do you measure it?
• 32:27
  Matt Francis: Well.
• 32:28
  Eric Howerton: I'm in my operating agreement.
• 32:29
  Eric Howerton: Now, yeah, Well, like I mean, I don't, I mean I think that's, that's what we're doing.
• 32:34
  Mark Zweig: We're really getting good people.
• 32:35
  Mark Zweig: Unless you're willing to provide some kind of ownership opportunity, yeah.
• 32:41
  Matt Francis: But you know, I think a lot of small business owners are too self-assured in regard and that's one of the things we pivoted it on with our company over time is we went from just having the original founders to actually having you know a stock option playing all this and so, yeah, pretty much all my employees.
• 32:56
  Matt Francis: they always end up at being essentially owning a piece of the company.
• 33:00
  Matt Francis: Yeah, that's cool, that's how over time.
• 33:03
  Matt Francis: So that's something I would have done from day one.
• 33:05
  Matt Francis: Yeah, put that on, just put it.
• 33:07
  Matt Francis: Put it.
• 33:07
  Matt Francis: Set it up to where there was a pool for that.
• 33:09
  Matt Francis: And so you know those things the later you do them, the more expensive they are.
• 33:14
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, it's always a problem.
• 33:15
  Eric Howerton: I mean yeah.
• 33:17
  Matt Francis: So it is, but you know, we did some things right.
• 33:19
  Matt Francis: I started out as a C-Corp.
• 33:20
  Matt Francis: I didn't do an S or an LLC.
• 33:23
  Mark Zweig: It was Thank God, because LLCs, in particular, they don't, they don't scale, they don't scale.
• 33:29
  Matt Francis: And I, yeah, we just converted an LLC into a C-Corp and that was some of the best advice I got when I started was to just like yeah, you're not, and at the time the taxes mattered and it's like you're not making much money anyway.
• 33:40
  Matt Francis: We're in a building mode.
• 33:42
  Matt Francis: What difference does it?
• 33:43
  Mark Zweig: make.
• 33:43
  Mark Zweig: Plus, you can always bonus out all your profits through the payroll, and in which case you got no profit anyway.
• 33:49
  Eric Howerton: We've talked about that.
• 33:50
  Eric Howerton: I mean, I think I'm going to start it like that makes sense, but I've ran into problems on acquisition, like being acquired as a C-Corp or S-Corp is extremely problematic.
• 34:01
  Matt Francis: Yeah as well, yeah.
• 34:02
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, but the LLC is super simple Well it's not necessarily more somatic in the sense if you've got good bylaws and shareholder agreements, the LLC, any member, could hold up your whole deal.
• 34:17
  Mark Zweig: You realize that?
• 34:18
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, whereas in a typical corporation a majority of shareholders can make the decision.
• 34:23
  Matt Francis: Yes, well, I'm a fan of corporations you can work in, drag along clauses and other things right from day one.
• 34:30
  Eric Howerton: We should probably have an episode about that in digs and deep, oh yeah, deepness, because, yes, we do need.
• 34:34
  Eric Howerton: The thing is, what I experienced was that when we were out trying to raise capital for a company the second that I said we were in S-Corp we would have folks who know for out.
• 34:45
  Mark Zweig: Well, you know why?
• 34:45
  Mark Zweig: Because they can't own their ownership interest in another entity in the name of another entity.
• 34:52
  Mark Zweig: That's the problem with an S-Corp.
• 34:55
  Eric Howerton: So, but how do you that?
• 34:56
  Mark Zweig: that's what I'm kind of saying A S-Corp, though, you can do that, you can do that, yeah, okay, that's the difference.
• 35:00
  Eric Howerton: But they didn't want to change the C-Corp, they wanted to go to LLC.
• 35:03
  Eric Howerton: Okay, all of them.
• 35:04
  Eric Howerton: I'm just telling you, I don't know why, I'm just like.
• 35:09
  Mark Zweig: The attorneys automatically.
• 35:10
  Mark Zweig: If you said I want to go start a business, they'll be like we'll set you up with an LLC.
• 35:13
  Mark Zweig: It's the first knee jerk reaction, but they need to know what your longer term plans.
• 35:18
  Matt Francis: Yeah, exactly, you have to fit it to your.
• 35:19
  Matt Francis: Yeah, if you're going to set it up, you're going to sell it, or maybe?
• 35:23
  Mark Zweig: And not bring other owners in and out.
• 35:25
  Eric Howerton: Okay, that's where LLC.
• 35:26
  Eric Howerton: That LLC is great so anyway, which is kind of what they're going to go.
• 35:31
  Eric Howerton: Oh sorry, no, no, no, no Go ahead.
• 35:33
  Matt Francis: That's a deep conversation.
• 35:34
  Matt Francis: It is, but yeah, so Deep thoughts.
• 35:36
  Mark Zweig: Deep jack-and-dude, do you remember?
• 35:39
  Eric Howerton: Oh yes, I don't know, that was the best man.
• 35:42
  Eric Howerton: That's why I watch this.
• 35:44
  Eric Howerton: And all of a sudden he thought so did he, sorry man, yeah, I will.
• 35:48
  Matt Francis: I mean, we get a lot of side tracks.
• 35:50
  Matt Francis: Oh well, yeah, you'll send me down all sorts of SNL.
• 35:53
  Matt Francis: He's liking the ride man.
• 35:55
  Mark Zweig: I know I'm telling you, matt.
• 35:57
  Mark Zweig: It's why you can.
• 35:59
  Mark Zweig: I liked him.
• 36:00
  Mark Zweig: He's just down to earth.
• 36:01
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 36:01
  Mark Zweig: Seacores.
• 36:02
  Mark Zweig: They're like butter.
• 36:03
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, like that.
• 36:05
  Eric Howerton: See Rabbit trail More cowbell.
• 36:10
  Mark Zweig: So, matt, so you got.
• 36:11
  Mark Zweig: You started out, you had an advisory board, you created a Seacorp, you got grant money.
• 36:17
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:20
  Matt Francis: And well, you know there was still.
• 36:22
  Matt Francis: There was new struggles after that because you had to learn how to administer those projects, because it's not like you just get a bunch of money and you know, hey, you're done, you've got to set up.
• 36:32
  Matt Francis: You know government Basically, as soon as you start a company that's going to do government contracting, you kind of in a way, need to be a miniature defense contractor, you reflect the market that you serve, exactly yes.
• 36:45
  Matt Francis: I've always said that.
• 36:46
  Matt Francis: So you have to learn, you have to say, and that's one of the big the other, if you're going to go down this path.
• 36:51
  Matt Francis: The next big mistake people make is they don't.
• 36:53
  Matt Francis: They don't know how to set up the books from day one Right and that, and if you set them up wrong, fixing them that gets really expensive, like can't bring overhead.
• 37:02
  Mark Zweig: Exactly it's all about your overhead.
• 37:04
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, and they look into all that.
• 37:06
  Eric Howerton: They have the right to see all that stuff and I'm sure they do pretty sophisticated PO processing.
• 37:12
  Matt Francis: Oh, they do.
• 37:12
  Matt Francis: And then also it's completely different based on who you're talking to, yeah, which agencies.
• 37:20
  Matt Francis: Which makes the bold billy like you got to have your eyes dotted so that was, you know, when we started it was like my hat rack was full of hats.
• 37:28
  Matt Francis: Right, I did accounting, I did everything.
• 37:30
  Matt Francis: So I learned a lot along the way and I still say the happiest day I had was when my bookkeeper who still works for me when she came on, oh yeah, totally, I wasn't doing entries, I wasn't doing all this stuff, but yeah.
• 37:43
  Matt Francis: So we but you know, we had our struggles.
• 37:46
  Matt Francis: It was still sort of a touch and go for several years, but it was basically I think it was around 2015,.
• 37:52
  Matt Francis: We finally just sort of hit it off that we, you know, you're putting ideas into ether.
• 37:58
  Matt Francis: Once you get in, it's a two-way street because you're performing on these topics and you know what the next topic they're going to ask for is probably going to be based on what you did.
• 38:06
  Matt Francis: So once you're in, you're starting to become a thought leader and if you're doing this right in the process, and so we finally sort of got to a point where there was a I think there was becoming a consensus on the approach that we had to high temperature and we we're still, to this day, things hilarious.
• 38:24
  Matt Francis: We got freaked out.
• 38:25
  Matt Francis: We won two projects at the same time.
• 38:27
  Matt Francis: You know, we were so small back then we couldn't even think conceived of that.
• 38:31
  Matt Francis: And we said, well, this thing, this might go.
• 38:35
  Matt Francis: And so we got those two and they were the first.
• 38:37
  Matt Francis: They're multi-phase, so we got two phase ones and for us the goal was starting out we wanted to get a phase two because that would be probably close to a million dollars Over two years.
• 38:47
  Matt Francis: We can, we can do some stuff.
• 38:49
  Matt Francis: Right, we got a baseline, so we finally, around then, around 2015, we got one of those, transitioned to a phase two and then basically we were off to the races since then.
• 38:59
  Matt Francis: Then I really started being able.
• 39:01
  Matt Francis: I started hiring full-time engineers.
• 39:03
  Matt Francis: We weren't all part divers doing other things and, yeah, we grew it.
• 39:07
  Matt Francis: And so I literally grew it from a hundred dollar company.
• 39:10
  Matt Francis: And now we're you know we're we're usually doing three and a half to.
• 39:14
  Matt Francis: I think we'll be probably doing 10 million in revenue here in a year or two.
• 39:19
  Matt Francis: And so hockey stick and all that good stuff, right, man?
• 39:23
  Matt Francis: So 20 employees now and that's growing pretty steadily.
• 39:27
  Matt Francis: Are y'all all in Elkins too?
• 39:28
  Matt Francis: No, no, so we're.
• 39:29
  Matt Francis: Actually we started back in the in the tech park at the down south Fayetteville, and we're still there to this day, I still technically have the original room we started in as one of our part of our suite.
• 39:42
  Matt Francis: We just kept adding, adding, adding, and now we're the building we're in, we're the biggest tenant, and then what happened is we started making these chips, coming back to like the technology we, we, as we got to this point where we could actually start making them.
• 39:58
  Matt Francis: We got off the paper and started making them.
• 40:00
  Matt Francis: We realized that making the chips was only half the battle.
• 40:03
  Matt Francis: You had to put them in something to even test them, and so we started learning about packaging.
• 40:10
  Matt Francis: So, like what you put the chips in, and for high temperature, it's not going to be plastic, it's ceramics.
• 40:16
  Matt Francis: So then my hands on kicked in.
• 40:19
  Matt Francis: Yeah that was like you can make circuits out of out of ceramics.
• 40:24
  Matt Francis: This is really cool.
• 40:25
  Matt Francis: Do you have a kiln?
• 40:26
  Matt Francis: Yes, and that's that's really what Ozark has.
• 40:29
  Matt Francis: Our in-house is all around, is all around the.
• 40:32
  Matt Francis: So we design the circuits, we help develop the processes to manufacture the, the integrated circuits, but what we do here in Fayetteville is we do the all the ceramic packaging.
• 40:45
  Matt Francis: So, yeah, we have.
• 40:46
  Matt Francis: We have kilns, we have printers, we have punches, and then we have the.
• 40:51
  Matt Francis: The thing that you have to do then is get the signal off of the chip onto that board or package.
• 40:56
  Matt Francis: So we have these machines that are really like industrial robots, called wire bonders, that can make this tiny little wire, a thousandth of a human hair thick, go from one point to the other.
• 41:09
  Matt Francis: Then you program to do this Really so fascinating.
• 41:12
  Mark Zweig: I love this.
• 41:13
  Mark Zweig: Let me ask you this, and I had some family members who are in the ceramics trade, martin you're talking low like you.
• 41:20
  Eric Howerton: Nobody can see your face right here.
• 41:22
  Mark Zweig: And they all called kilns, kills, kills.
• 41:25
  Mark Zweig: I've called them that in your field.
• 41:28
  Mark Zweig: It's something unique to our vernacular here it's like I got to get a new kill.
• 41:32
  Mark Zweig: I'm like what are you talking about?
• 41:34
  Matt Francis: We're engineers, so we call them.
• 41:35
  Matt Francis: We call them furnaces.
• 41:37
  Mark Zweig: Okay, oh, okay.
• 41:39
  Matt Francis: You don't call them refractors.
• 41:40
  Matt Francis: No, we call them furnaces.
• 41:42
  Matt Francis: Okay, yeah, they go.
• 41:44
  Matt Francis: If they go really high in temperature, their furnaces, and if they're moderate range, their ovens that's our, that's our, that's our.
• 41:48
  Mark Zweig: Well, that's good, then I'm I'm happy to hear that, cause it always.
• 41:52
  Matt Francis: But Well, we run into all this stuff where it's actually suspecting cones and stuff like that.
• 41:57
  Matt Francis: The materials, because it comes from ceramics, it's bizarre and we're making circuit boards out of it.
• 42:02
  Matt Francis: But what we, what we ended up figuring out through all of this discovery, customer discovery was that you know, you're making chips.
• 42:09
  Matt Francis: Cool, but there were chips out there.
• 42:11
  Matt Francis: There were, there were, there were materials and things, but what no one had done is put it all together into something that would work in almost any application.
• 42:19
  Matt Francis: And if you look at what electronics have turned into, whether it's, you know, you're in your cell phone or running the window up and down in your car, it's basically a computer.
• 42:29
  Matt Francis: It's just a different scale, different scales, right, I understand.
• 42:33
  Mark Zweig: Right yeah, every car has got 20 or 40 of them, or however many it's got.
• 42:37
  Matt Francis: Exactly.
• 42:37
  Matt Francis: And so well, guess what, if you're going to do a high temperature, what you need to make is a computer.
• 42:42
  Matt Francis: Right, you need to make a general purpose computer, and then you can put stuff around it, customize it for the, for the, for the customer.
• 42:48
  Matt Francis: So yeah, so that's what we do.
• 42:50
  Matt Francis: We make a single board computers so ceramics with our own chips on them.
• 42:55
  Eric Howerton: Maybe there's somebody out there that's going to be listening to signers.
• 42:58
  Eric Howerton: I am like what's the difference between?
• 43:00
  Eric Howerton: What do you mean by computer versus the chips?
• 43:03
  Matt Francis: Well, yeah, so it's, it's the rate.
• 43:05
  Matt Francis: So, basically, by making the chips into a computer.
• 43:09
  Matt Francis: So what does that mean, though?
• 43:11
  Matt Francis: It means it's programmable.
• 43:12
  Matt Francis: That's really what it means.
• 43:14
  Matt Francis: It means now software can come to play, because you can put your software in the chip.
• 43:19
  Matt Francis: That's really what a computer that becomes a computer.
• 43:22
  Matt Francis: Wow, that'll be damn.
• 43:23
  Mark Zweig: And you do this rather on a micro scale.
• 43:25
  Matt Francis: That's.
• 43:25
  Matt Francis: That goes back to Turing.
• 43:26
  Matt Francis: He theorized that if you made a machine this way, you basically could make it do anything.
• 43:33
  Matt Francis: It's a general purpose machine.
• 43:36
  Eric Howerton: So are you guys?
• 43:37
  Eric Howerton: Are you all writing the scripts in the software that goes into?
• 43:41
  Matt Francis: the chip.
• 43:41
  Matt Francis: Yes, we do that.
• 43:42
  Matt Francis: It depends on the customer.
• 43:43
  Matt Francis: There's some where we do everything and there's others where we say, here you go, here's the start, and they're going to write their own.
• 43:47
  Matt Francis: But yeah, that's, that's the sole.
• 43:51
  Matt Francis: It allows them to customize it further into their application Can they go back and customize it as well.
• 43:56
  Matt Francis: Can you just throw in new scripts and yes, exactly yes, and it's like when you can take your car to the dealer or do an over the air update.
• 44:03
  Matt Francis: It's the same sort of thing, yeah, but the difference is the applications we're going into might be oil and oil and gas drilling rig or a jet engine, that's.
• 44:11
  Matt Francis: We're basically making those same kind of computers that have on on a, you know, in your engine management system in a car, but we're making them for these, these other.
• 44:19
  Mark Zweig: You've also done stuff for NASA, yes, and how about SpaceX?
• 44:26
  Matt Francis: Are they?
• 44:26
  Matt Francis: Yeah, no, so we've.
• 44:28
  Matt Francis: We've never broken in with SpaceX, but yeah, we've have done a lot of our early work.
• 44:33
  Matt Francis: Actually, our first contract was for NASA and a lot of it was driven by.
• 44:38
  Matt Francis: They eventually want to land their own stuff on Venus.
• 44:41
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it's, it's almost 500 degrees Celsius and a hundred times earth pressure, and it rains sulfuric acid.
• 44:49
  Mark Zweig: Holy cow.
• 44:50
  Matt Francis: That's no big deal, so we got to ask.
• 44:54
  Mark Zweig: That's what you call a not so friendly environment.
• 44:56
  Matt Francis: It's and so that's what I it was.
• 44:59
  Matt Francis: It was one of our first applications, and so that's what we actually called it Like the, where we figured out a lot of this stuff that we're now doing.
• 45:06
  Matt Francis: At like, a lot of our products are around 200 and 250 C our commercial products.
• 45:10
  Matt Francis: So like centigrade.
• 45:12
  Matt Francis: Centigrade.
• 45:12
  Matt Francis: Yeah.
• 45:13
  Matt Francis: So, like like lasagna, temperatures in the in the 300s Fahrenheit 300 to 400 Fahrenheit Lasagna temperatures.
• 45:19
  Eric Howerton: Yeah yeah, that's what I, that's what I.
• 45:20
  Eric Howerton: I try to relate everything.
• 45:22
  Eric Howerton: Thank you.
• 45:25
  Matt Francis: But that's where a lot of our commercial stuff is.
• 45:28
  Matt Francis: But so when I talked to Custer like how we figured out how to make that stuff work for long term, I said Venus, so as so, instead of a moonshot we had a Venus shot.
• 45:36
  Matt Francis: Yeah, it's like the moonshot advanced us into doing essentially all the semiconductors, a lot of these other things.
• 45:42
  Matt Francis: For Ozark it was a Venus shot.
• 45:44
  Matt Francis: We, we did all these programs and try, like how would you make this work on Venus?
• 45:47
  Matt Francis: And you know, literally that's when I started putting circuits in kilns, what's just to see if they would work.
• 45:52
  Mark Zweig: Test and puzzle.
• 45:54
  Eric Howerton: So is it.
• 45:54
  Eric Howerton: So is it ceramic that can withstand?
• 45:56
  Matt Francis: that Venus?
• 45:57
  Matt Francis: That's part of the yeah, that's part of the part of the puzzle.
• 45:59
  Matt Francis: Is the yeah, the system that makes the most sense for that you put, integrate all the chips together with the ceramics.
• 46:05
  Matt Francis: That's really where we got into it and then the.
• 46:08
  Matt Francis: To make the chips work at those temperatures, we actually use different things than silicon, one of them, silicon carbide, and so that was a material we got into way way early and this imagine a lot of that stuff you're doing is very proprietary secretive.
• 46:22
  Matt Francis: Well, you know it varies.
• 46:24
  Matt Francis: I've always told people is like I think this is one of our key advantages.
• 46:28
  Matt Francis: One of the problems with technologists is they'll get welded to something that they just.
• 46:32
  Matt Francis: I love this, this is my thing, this is the best way.
• 46:35
  Matt Francis: Ozark is not that way.
• 46:37
  Matt Francis: We're welded to the problem Like what solves the problem.
• 46:40
  Matt Francis: So if something new comes along, gotta keep learning Exactly.
• 46:43
  Matt Francis: Our goal is to be there at the table when something new comes along, and if it's better than what we're doing for an application, then we'll use it.
• 46:51
  Matt Francis: But there's a lot of variables.
• 46:52
  Matt Francis: It might be better in terms of performance, but it might not be better in terms of cost.
• 46:56
  Matt Francis: It might not be scalable to volume.
• 46:58
  Matt Francis: So you have to always be cognizant of these things and know there's not one solution, there's multiple solutions and you're always mapping them to the application.
• 47:07
  Eric Howerton: It sounds like a quote from an entrepreneur, or not an engineer.
• 47:09
  Mark Zweig: It does.
• 47:10
  Mark Zweig: I was just thinking business is much the same, totally yeah.
• 47:13
  Mark Zweig: You can't get wedded and say, well, this is the answer, everybody's got to go on EOS or whatever.
• 47:19
  Mark Zweig: Yeah right, you know you've got to be open and you've got to be learning.
• 47:23
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and I think that's what you said.
• 47:26
  Matt Francis: I'm hoping that's what we see more of over the coming years.
• 47:29
  Matt Francis: With what the investments from the government and related to the CHIPS Act is more problem solving.
• 47:37
  Mark Zweig: And well, I think this is the ultimate.
• 47:38
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and please could I just give me another million dollars Because I want to finish this thought.
• 47:43
  Matt Francis: I was like who needs the thought?
• 47:45
  Matt Francis: They want the stakeholders that have the problems at the table from day one.
• 47:49
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, they're trying to pay for the to ensure their theory not continue to Exactly.
• 47:56
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, so where do you go with this business, matt?
• 48:00
  Matt Francis: Well, I said we.
• 48:00
  Matt Francis: So essentially people ask like you know, where are we?
• 48:04
  Matt Francis: I said, well, I think we're probably at least a decade ahead of anyone else because we had the just determination and to do it.
• 48:14
  Matt Francis: There's actually some pretty large market reports come out and list us as one of the disruptors and literally be on charts where we're the only company that's not valued in billions of dollars.
• 48:25
  Matt Francis: So you know, we're pretty excited about where it is and I'm you know I am, at the end of the day, whether I'm an Arkansen by birth or by spirit, I just want to build it and I want to build stuff here.
• 48:44
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I love it and that's what we all love.
• 48:47
  Matt Francis: Yeah, and what the people have always asked is like well, you know you're growing at this rate and stuff and can you?
• 48:51
  Matt Francis: Can you grow the team?
• 48:52
  Matt Francis: And I said we've always been able to.
• 48:54
  Matt Francis: You know what?
• 48:55
  Matt Francis: One of the biggest things that we export from the state are smart people, and when you give them an opportunity to come back here and do cool stuff, they think there's a lot.
• 49:03
  Matt Francis: Or stay here and do cool stuff.
• 49:04
  Matt Francis: That's right.
• 49:05
  Mark Zweig: As a bug, you guys, though the way we're stereotyped out there and the and the media, I mean it's just, you know, it's like I saw that movie that came out recently with David Dukovny and and yeah, the airport movie yeah, and, and Meg Ryan, and it's like it starts out where are you?
• 49:25
  Mark Zweig: I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere.
• 49:27
  Mark Zweig: Okay, you know, in some flyover country or whatever, some some negative aspersions.
• 49:34
  Mark Zweig: You know, that's the way people think of us and we do have smart people here and we have people who can actually do stuff.
• 49:41
  Mark Zweig: Oh, yeah, I just hate that.
• 49:43
  Eric Howerton: I kind of like it, though.
• 49:44
  Eric Howerton: It gives you yeah, it gives the opportunity to shank somebody.
• 49:47
  Eric Howerton: You can you just shank him.
• 49:50
  Eric Howerton: You feel like a prison.
• 49:52
  Eric Howerton: But it's kind of a prison, I mean.
• 49:53
  Eric Howerton: It's a little bit like that, though.
• 49:55
  Eric Howerton: I mean like because they got surprise people, there you go.
• 49:58
  Matt Francis: That's a better way to put it.
• 49:59
  Matt Francis: I think if you look at all of our, our, our, our, our our range of success stories in Arkansas surprise people.
• 50:06
  Matt Francis: They came out of nowhere.
• 50:07
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, because they.
• 50:08
  Eric Howerton: They let you.
• 50:09
  Eric Howerton: Oh, don't worry about that.
• 50:10
  Eric Howerton: That's what happened with our, our entire business.
• 50:13
  Eric Howerton: Like they let eyes, you got some goofballs over there.
• 50:16
  Eric Howerton: What do you know about software?
• 50:17
  Eric Howerton: What do you know about ecom?
• 50:19
  Eric Howerton: What do you know about retail?
• 50:21
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, this has to happen in New York, or.
• 50:23
  Eric Howerton: LA or Boston.
• 50:24
  Eric Howerton: Yeah no, we got to shanks.
• 50:25
  Eric Howerton: We got to New York shanking.
• 50:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah.
• 50:27
  Eric Howerton: It's fantastic.
• 50:28
  Matt Francis: Same thing with yeah Well, I try to work with everyone, so I'm not planning on shanking anyone but okay.
• 50:34
  Mark Zweig: So before a disclaimer, I'm a little scared to an uncluckly shanking, or I don't even know how you make a shank.
• 50:41
  Eric Howerton: Y'all need to acknowledge that I'm not talking about a physical.
• 50:44
  Mark Zweig: Do we like to use a fork to make that or something?
• 50:47
  Mark Zweig: So?
• 50:48
  Eric Howerton: I have no idea Cause I'm talking in in terms of figuratively speaking.
• 50:52
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, okay, okay, that's fine.
• 50:55
  Eric Howerton: Trying to get me in trouble here.
• 50:57
  Eric Howerton: You're trying to get me out.
• 50:59
  Eric Howerton: You're trying to oust me from our LLC for this podcast.
• 51:02
  Mark Zweig: No, I'm not, it's your bankroll buddy.
• 51:04
  Mark Zweig: You're the one supporting this thing.
• 51:06
  Mark Zweig: Thank God, so well, that's very interesting.
• 51:10
  Mark Zweig: So so what are your plans personally?
• 51:12
  Mark Zweig: You plan on keep working forever.
• 51:14
  Mark Zweig: Are you going to turn the reins over to somebody else and still be an owner, or do?
• 51:19
  Matt Francis: you have any plan at all.
• 51:20
  Matt Francis: So the way my brain, the way my brain works with a business is, if you're, if you're in my past experience if you try to set it up to sell it, it doesn't work.
• 51:30
  Matt Francis: So I'm focused, I'm just continuing to focus and solving the problem.
• 51:33
  Matt Francis: Yep, there you go and I, until there's a day I wake up and I don't want to do this anymore.
• 51:38
  Matt Francis: I'm going to keep doing it as long as I have the resource to be able to do it and the opportunity to do it.
• 51:43
  Matt Francis: It's.
• 51:43
  Matt Francis: I think these are some of the coolest problems to solve and I get to work with some of the best partners in the world and I get to make the you know the US be the most competitive in this area that I can make them love it.
• 51:57
  Mark Zweig: Somebody comes along and says bad, I'll give you a hundred million dollars to get out of this thing.
• 52:02
  Mark Zweig: What do you?
• 52:02
  Eric Howerton: do then 250,.
• 52:04
  Eric Howerton: He wants 250.
• 52:05
  Eric Howerton: It's his response.
• 52:10
  Mark Zweig: I mean, I'm just, you know you could go full around with your tractors and kilns or whatever that you want to do.
• 52:18
  Matt Francis: If scenarios came along that led the company scale up, then I would think about that.
• 52:23
  Matt Francis: It's about the mission for me.
• 52:25
  Matt Francis: Okay, well, that's good.
• 52:27
  Eric Howerton: I love that.
• 52:28
  Eric Howerton: I love you man.
• 52:29
  Mark Zweig: That's great man, that is a great guy.
• 52:31
  Mark Zweig: It's just one of the many great people we have here and one of the many people that I know.
• 52:36
  Eric Howerton: Well, I love the mission.
• 52:37
  Eric Howerton: Purpose behind a business to me is absolutely significant.
• 52:43
  Mark Zweig: This is what drives me crazy, though.
• 52:44
  Mark Zweig: Most people, when you start talking entrepreneurship and business, they ascribe these evil motives and greed just to make money.
• 52:52
  Mark Zweig: It's rarely it's like seven or eight down on the list.
• 52:57
  Mark Zweig: It's like I hope I can make a living doing what I love to do something.
• 53:02
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:03
  Eric Howerton: And then the good news for folks that aren't in the entrepreneurial space that might have that perspective is that most people that do start businesses to make money are not really going to be successful.
• 53:14
  Matt Francis: Exactly they.
• 53:15
  Matt Francis: As I said, they and they fail, they end up, and they usually end up miserable.
• 53:18
  Matt Francis: Totally miserable.
• 53:20
  Matt Francis: Exactly Because it's.
• 53:21
  Matt Francis: You know, running a business is really hard work.
• 53:23
  Mark Zweig: It's a labor of love it takes.
• 53:24
  Mark Zweig: We always say we don't believe in what we do.
• 53:27
  Mark Zweig: We believe in work-life balance, we believe in work-life integration here, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's one and the same.
• 53:33
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, you know, it's funny, like even just last night.
• 53:37
  Eric Howerton: First of all made two knots in a row and made a really bad mistake.
• 53:39
  Eric Howerton: Eights and nerd clusters before bed.
• 53:43
  Mark Zweig: But they're so good, don't do that, don't do that I can't stop.
• 53:46
  Mark Zweig: He's a loose thing.
• 53:47
  Mark Zweig: And then, not before, when my daughter heard me on, it hurt me.
• 53:50
  Eric Howerton: I might have a lot of it grabbing, getting a ruler actually for this thing, to make sure that you don't look at the engineer of that.
• 53:56
  Eric Howerton: It's terrible.
• 53:57
  Eric Howerton: Man, don't be judging.
• 53:59
  Mark Zweig: But anyway, I saw it, nerd clusters.
• 54:01
  Eric Howerton: And I was in the oh and I did the impulse thing and said, oh man, there's some nerd clusters and they only come in like a huge bag.
• 54:07
  Eric Howerton: Well, yeah, yeah.
• 54:08
  Eric Howerton: So I ate them.
• 54:10
  Eric Howerton: Then that night and I didn't slip like hell, did I before?
• 54:12
  Eric Howerton: And then last night I get home, my wife, for some reason, she saw the popularity of the nerd clusters so she bought some.
• 54:17
  Eric Howerton: So she bought a family, like I'm talking, it was like a gallon bag, oh, buddy.
• 54:22
  Eric Howerton: And I did my hand in there two times.
• 54:24
  Eric Howerton: So I fall asleep.
• 54:26
  Eric Howerton: Fine, it's like I can't stop, I know.
• 54:28
  Eric Howerton: And then you wake up, and I will wake up at 2 am, 3 am, and my mind is just racing.
• 54:33
  Eric Howerton: But my point to this is that I wake up and all I'm doing in my mind, subconsciously, is thinking about all the business problems going on.
• 54:41
  Eric Howerton: I mean it's just like dude.
• 54:42
  Eric Howerton: I mean I feel like I was like literally spinning.
• 54:45
  Eric Howerton: That happens so many times but just so fresh on my memory and I can't go back to sleep, right.
• 54:51
  Eric Howerton: So I'm like I'm doing nerd clusters, b problems.
• 54:54
  Eric Howerton: But the point of that is is if, unless you're mission bound in your business, because what I started to do is consciously start overcoming that by going why am I doing what I'm doing?
• 55:03
  Eric Howerton: What is my purpose behind what I'm doing?
• 55:05
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, because all these problems exist.
• 55:07
  Eric Howerton: I'm like, oh, that's right, I'm doing a, I'm doing B, right, doing C, this is what and this is a bigger vision behind it, and I know that.
• 55:16
  Eric Howerton: Yes, and if I don't do this, no one's going to do it.
• 55:18
  Eric Howerton: Therefore, the problem's still going to exist and things will progress and be better.
• 55:25
  Matt Francis: And I said I'm biased and I'm sure you are, and I think the entrepreneurial mindset is a is the right mindset.
• 55:32
  Matt Francis: You can apply it to running a business or you can apply it to being in an organization of any kind not a nonprofit, in government and that's right.
• 55:41
  Matt Francis: That's how I've probably ended up.
• 55:43
  Matt Francis: And also along the way, working with so many different organizations is because I get the same buzz from it, the same high for applying that mindset to.
• 55:54
  Matt Francis: Hey, this is a really cool problem.
• 55:56
  Matt Francis: What's our mission?
• 55:57
  Matt Francis: How do we solve it?
• 55:58
  Matt Francis: And if you get state of the core, you can solve anything.
• 56:02
  Eric Howerton: Totally agree and like because you have this.
• 56:04
  Eric Howerton: If you have the same mentality of I'm going to start a business to make money, hey, you're going to get your butt kicked at the 3 am.
• 56:11
  Mark Zweig: Right.
• 56:11
  Eric Howerton: Right, yes, same thing is if you go work for a company and it's about, hey, how much time do I get off, I get my benefits and how much money I get, yeah, what's my ceiling for growth?
• 56:20
  Eric Howerton: What are all these pathways and plans?
• 56:23
  Eric Howerton: Like, you are in the wrong mentality.
• 56:24
  Eric Howerton: But if you're going there and you're like, hey, you know what I love, what this company's doing Exactly, I'm going to do this.
• 56:29
  Eric Howerton: Here's what's disappointing.
• 56:31
  Eric Howerton: I had an interview with a guy a few days ago about a position and he was speaking mission and vision about.
• 56:39
  Eric Howerton: You know, because I was sharing him what I'm doing.
• 56:41
  Eric Howerton: He's like, man, I love it.
• 56:42
  Eric Howerton: Boom, boom, boom boom.
• 56:44
  Eric Howerton: And so disappointing that this person text messes me back.
• 56:47
  Eric Howerton: You know, the next day is like hey, listen, I can't do it.
• 56:51
  Eric Howerton: I'm like man I thought we had a really fantastic connection Good connection, yes, and the really important stuff.
• 56:56
  Eric Howerton: What happened was you went away and got suffocated by someone out there that was hey well, what's the pay?
• 57:05
  Eric Howerton: What's the ladder and the skill?
• 57:07
  Eric Howerton: Probably their spot.
• 57:08
  Mark Zweig: This is your fraud.
• 57:08
  Mark Zweig: He doesn't have the same entrepreneurial orientation.
• 57:11
  Mark Zweig: I think a lot of people end up like that, but we've had that discussion right here with our spouses.
• 57:19
  Mark Zweig: Eric and I brought our shoes.
• 57:20
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, Remember when we should have had mats here with us.
• 57:23
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, okay, we should have with the horse women what?
• 57:26
  Mark Zweig: else Do a horse horse?
• 57:27
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, we should get Christie on here.
• 57:30
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, we need to get Christie's got a real business with her horse farm, so I have no horses.
• 57:34
  Eric Howerton: I will have no relevancy to that.
• 57:36
  Eric Howerton: You're like a horse combo.
• 57:37
  Eric Howerton: You don't have to have me a hair for that one, because I won't add anything to it other than the stupid questions.
• 57:44
  Mark Zweig: The one great quote I've learned was if you're talking to the horse's rear, you're not talking to the horse's head, or something.
• 57:52
  Mark Zweig: Well, I think you could be not talking to the horse's head, you're talking to the horse's rear.
• 57:56
  Mark Zweig: I don't know.
• 57:58
  Matt Francis: We could play the same role as Best in Show.
• 58:00
  Matt Francis: Yeah, oh yeah.
• 58:01
  Mark Zweig: For sure which role in Best in Show is that.
• 58:04
  Mark Zweig: That movie is one of my favorites.
• 58:07
  Matt Francis: The guy who was the announcer.
• 58:08
  Matt Francis: Oh yeah, willard, I remember his name.
• 58:11
  Mark Zweig: Oh, Fred Willard.
• 58:12
  Mark Zweig: Yes.
• 58:13
  Matt Francis: Yeah, I could do that.
• 58:14
  Matt Francis: Yeah, because that's why I thought he knew nothing about dogs and that was so funny about it.
• 58:20
  Matt Francis: Why does that matter?
• 58:23
  Eric Howerton: But that episode with their wives remember how we like I mean at the beginning it was really like they had a lot you know, like they knew what they were talking about.
• 58:31
  Eric Howerton: By the end of it you and I had like really shown the audience who's boss in that relationship, oh great.
• 58:38
  Mark Zweig: He loves to say stuff like this because it's the complete opposite.
• 58:42
  Mark Zweig: Okay.
• 58:44
  Eric Howerton: My wife was so attracted to me after that episode it was ridiculous.
• 58:48
  Eric Howerton: She's like.
• 58:49
  Eric Howerton: You're such a smart, beautiful, sexy man.
• 58:51
  Eric Howerton: I don't know about you.
• 58:55
  Mark Zweig: I can't say I've experienced that reaction, but anyway, you know my wife, she's pretty hard edged, but anyway, so, yeah, I think that's very interesting, though, to talk about this and and and I commend you, matt, for having the the long game and the right motivations, yeah, and also the ability to do all the other things that you do.
• 59:21
  Mark Zweig: It's not like you don't have any other interests or life.
• 59:24
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you know you've been able to build this business and redo your, your places there in Elkins, and be very active in restoring the town to a guiding its future with your your your work.
• 59:41
  Matt Francis: Yeah, yeah, I've had the the the honor of serving on the city council now for five years.
• 59:48
  Mark Zweig: Oh, cool yeah.
• 59:50
  Matt Francis: And it's been a it's been a fascinating experience.
• 59:54
  Matt Francis: I said I never knew I would know so much about Sewers, right, but but is a lot of the skills I've transferred?
• 1:00:04
  Matt Francis: Sure, the mindset transfers everywhere and it was, it's been, it's been.
• 1:00:08
  Matt Francis: It really has been great to see the community continue to grow and and it's been great to be a part of that.
• 1:00:14
  Matt Francis: And I said I'm I'm on my way to the airport and it's not for work, it's actually for volunteer work.
• 1:00:19
  Matt Francis: I'm sitting on the board of one of the largest technical professionals societies in the world.
• 1:00:24
  Matt Francis: That's how I trip a little bit.
• 1:00:25
  Matt Francis: I trip a little bit, yeah.
• 1:00:26
  Mark Zweig: So that's what I thought.
• 1:00:27
  Mark Zweig: It's fantastic and we're really glad you're here.
• 1:00:31
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, it's been great, and and I guess I'm going to end with one final question Maybe this is too broad for the amount of time we've got, which is just a couple of minutes, but, matt, tell us, tell our listeners, what advice do you have for them if they want to get into their own business?
• 1:00:51
  Mark Zweig: It's the most important thought that you would have for them.
• 1:00:56
  Matt Francis: Well, I think we kind of hit on it.
• 1:00:58
  Matt Francis: You have to absolutely match something you love with something you can make some money at, I think.
• 1:01:05
  Matt Francis: I think that is and I have that conversation many, many times over with with young people and I guess I'd add to that Don't be afraid to get into it and pivot to something else.
• 1:01:18
  Matt Francis: Yeah, okay.
• 1:01:20
  Eric Howerton: Yeah, don't hold to that theory, don't?
• 1:01:22
  Matt Francis: hold to the original theory.
• 1:01:23
  Matt Francis: You need one to start with.
• 1:01:24
  Matt Francis: Yeah, if we hadn't pivoted two times in the history of the company by listening, we wouldn't still be here.
• 1:01:31
  Matt Francis: We pivoted at least twice.
• 1:01:34
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, you got to grow, you got to adapt to your market, you got to learn things and change.
• 1:01:39
  Mark Zweig: I mean, eric completely transformed his marketing consulting business into a software company.
• 1:01:43
  Matt Francis: That's a great example An excellent example Of that.
• 1:01:47
  Mark Zweig: So yeah, Sorry to tell, but scary.
• 1:01:49
  Mark Zweig: I think, especially when the world is in such a dynamic state as it's, in Some constant change, one must be open to change.
• 1:01:59
  Mark Zweig: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:01
  Matt Francis: And I guess let's just summarize it Be open to change if you're going to start a business Very good.
• 1:02:06
  Mark Zweig: All right.
• 1:02:06
  Mark Zweig: Well, we are so glad you're here and hope you have a good trip, and I want to thank all of our listeners and encourage you to get onto our website of wwwbigtalkaboutsmusinesscom and see our whole bank of episodes out there and, as we discussed last time, as Mark said, you don't have to log in to our website.
• 1:02:34
  Eric Howerton: No, sorry.
• 1:02:36
  Mark Zweig: You can just hit our website or whatever you do.
• 1:02:40
  Eric Howerton: I'm sorry, I'm picking on you, man, it's okay.
• 1:02:43
  Mark Zweig: Sorry, there's no login required.
• 1:02:44
  Mark Zweig: Just get on our website, click on some things Get on it.
• 1:02:49
  Mark Zweig: Click, get on it, click, scrub, and if you want to get an email address on the show, we're glad to accept those, and if you want more of Matt, come back on, let us know, man, yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Mark Zweig: Matt, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what is your email address?
• 1:03:05
  Matt Francis: Francis F-R-A-N-C-I-S at Ozark-I-C dot com.
• 1:03:08
  Matt Francis: Sweet, All right.
• 1:03:10
  Matt Francis: Thank you so much.
• 1:03:12
  Mark Zweig: Well, we'll say goodbye now.
• 1:03:13
  Mark Zweig: This has been another episode of Big.
• 1:03:16
  Eric Howerton: Talk About Small Business.
• 1:03:18
  Eric Howerton: We'll be good now.